Ten Of The Craziest Fad Diets (That You Should Probably Never Try)

Everywhere around you people are probably talking about “getting in shape for the summer,” their “diet plans,” and how they’d finally like to “look good in a bikini.” While striving for health is fashionable all year round, people seem to get extra insane ideas in their head when the weather gets hot and people start shedding their winter layers.

Going on a sensible diet and exercise routine is one thing; drinking water soup, “eating” air or only purple baby food is another. After culling the internet for Ten Of The Wackiest Fad Diets Out There, we’ll stick to our moderate calories in-calories out plan that doesn’t involve having a tapeworm living inside us.

10. The Air Diet

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Inspired by Dolce & Gabbana ads of [lastfm link_type=”artist_info”]Madonna[/lastfm] eating air, some French people decided the best new diet trend for ultimate weight loss would be the “Air Diet.”

Here’s what it entails: You don’t eat anything except for water and salt soup. However, you are allowed to put food on your plate and pretend to eat it–as long as you don’t let it touch your lips or swallow. This action makes you feel full even though you are consuming nothing.

This diet doesn’t sound too insane–until you get down to the obsessive-compulsive nature of it. You can only eat foods that are the same color in one day. For example, on Monday you eat purple foods, on Tuesday you eat green foods, on Wednesday you eat blue foods, and so on.

Eating fruits and veggies rich in color also means you are eating stuff rich in nutrients, but the crazy factor of only eat foods of one color? Pretty strong.

We think this idea is so disgusting, we can barely write about it. What you do is infest you body with an illegal tapeworm which screws with your digestion and calorie absorption. The only perk of this is that you can eat almost anything you want and you will lose weight.

How does one lose weight eating cookies? Well, according to a gentleman named Dr. Siegal, you can–as long as you eat his patented “weight loss” cookies. While each cookie is only about 90 calories with ingredients like whole wheat flour, bran, oats and a secret blend of amino acid proteins, eating six cookies and day and a tiny meal only amounts to about 800 calories a day.

Although this diet is a little nuts, it’s not half bad–if you can find a willing partner. We know that exercise is amazing for the cardiovascular system and a half hour of sex is said to burn about 200 calories per session. Sounds great right?

Here’s the caveat: Some proponents of the Sex Diet are saying that whenever you get hungry, you should have sex. Replace nutritious food with libidinous activities?

A diet created by self-help author Jennifer Sander, the Martini Diet lets you give in to your cravings for high fat foods–as long as those cravings are for posh foods like prosciutto and not nachos.

The diet actually doesn’t give you permission to drink Martini’s (false advertising), but it does use the 3 oz. martini glass as a measuring device for how big your “elegant” meals should be i.e. tiny.

Exploratory 2-year-olds will love this diet because it requires you to eat stuff you would normally clean or craft with–cotton balls.

Here’s the simple rule: cotton balls before meals. What the cotton balls do is fill you stomach and keep you feeling full. However, cotton balls have absolutely no nutritional value (shocking) and can easily damage your digestive track.

Our suggestion if you want to eat something cotton-y and feel full–air-popped popcorn and a giant glass of water. Works every time!

Scientists say that a huge contributing factor to obesity is lack of sleep.The Sleep Diet plays off this theory by proposing that if you sleep your “ideal” amount of hours, you will lose weight–which for most people is about seven and half hours.

While we believe the theories that sleeping helps aid in weight loss by decreasing stress hormones (and the amount of possible time spent eating), some proponents of the Sleep Diet have taken it too far. Instead of eating, some people on the Sleep Diet sleep –which really defeats the purpose of the originally healthy idea.

Celebrities love this one. Instead of eating meals, the Baby Food Diet says you should eat about 14 tiny jars of low-calories pureed baby food. Another option is to replace a high calorie meal or all your snacks with baby food.

The moderate form of this diet (replacing a meal or snacks) actually seems like a pretty bright idea, as long as you are making sure your other meals serve your adult nutritional needs. But just eating baby food (which lacks calcium, fiber, and vitamin D) can make you nutritionally deficient because babies have much different vitamin requirements.

Although this diet has been around for a while, it has recently created controversy after the popular television host, Dr. Oz, did an exposé on it.

The hCG Diet requires dieters to consume less than 500 calories per day and take “daily shots of a hormone produced by pregnant women called human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG),” with dieters saying they have lost up to thirty pounds in one month on the diet. Apparently, the hormones aid in suppressing appetite.

First of all, hCG shots can be dangerous, expensive, and in some cases illegal. Second, only eating 500 calories a day can make many lose 30 pounds in a month–without any sort of “supplemental shot.” Third, only eating 500 calories a day is completely unhealthy unless doctor recommended. Last, weight loss is awesome, but dramatic weight loss from such a restrictive diet plan can only encourage bounce-back weight gain.

What do you think? Are some of these diets crazy or do you think they are normal? What kind of diet has worked for you? Let us know in the comments!